Work that makes you feel good: helping others

Posted by Spencer Cobb | Thursday, May 21st, 2009 | General Musings | No Comments

  Since  January of this year I’ve had the pleasure of being involved with a local non profit group called “Save Our Pets Food Bank“. This wonderful organization provides pet food to families who are going through tough economic times and need assistance in caring for the animal members of their families.  The idea is that less pets will be abandoned or given up for adoption if owners receive some help in feeding their pets! Great concept!  Ann King, a  successful business woman and animal activist founded the organization in Atlanta but intends to nationalize the model later this year.

Save Our Pets Food Bank’s website had a lot of great information but it needed some help in being better organized to assist visitors more easily. M3rcury media, in conjunction with Milt at Milt Webb Design helped provide a fresh design update and a more organized  approach to the group’s content. The site now contains a blog as well as a community forum where members can share stories and information with each other and the world.  Please stop by and visit and don’t forget to donate to this great cause.

Tags: blogs, milt webb, save our pets foodbank

Is Mobile Marketing Right For Your Business?

Posted by Spencer Cobb | Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | Mobile Marketing | No Comments

In recent years, advancements in both the mobile phone networks and mobile devices themselves have led to a technological and sociological paradigm shift. More and more people are using smart phones (with built in GPS, web browsing and email) as mobile computers.  Smart phones outsold laptops in 2008 for the first time ever. Juniper Research predicts that annual sales of smart phones will rise by 95% to over 300 Million by 2013.  They predict that twenty three percent of all phones sold will be smart phones.  These social and technical trends have brought on entirely new markets like Location Based Services (LBS) and mobile advertising/ marketing.  LBS, which ABI Research predicts  will be a $13B industry by 2013, leverages a smart phones’ built in GPS to provide services to its user.  Gartner predicts revenue from mobile advertising will grow from $1.7 Billion in 2007 to $10B by 2012.  

More and more companies are experimenting with LBS and mobile advertising to provide improved targeting, better engagement with their customers and improved branding.   For example, Burger King recently held trials which demonstrated some of the effectiveness of mobile,  proximity based advertising over traditional ads. BK used ‘mobile couponing’ to display a call to action banner ad on mobile phones which then provided users who clicked on the add with the location of the nearest Burger King.

All of these facts and stats on mobile trends should be great food for thought.  So how do you know if Mobile Marketing is right for your business? 

“The key advice for mobile marketers in terms of mobile advertising is that it is essential to look at the profile of your consumer to understand the opportunity in the mobile market and how these opportunities correspond to your target audience” according to Forrester analyst Ian Fogg.  To put it another way- you know your business, and you know your customers, does it make sense to reach them while they are on the go? For example, if you’ve created a web site for self help podcasts and videos, perhaps a ‘daily dose’ approach might work: you can use mobile ads to target specific individuals with an ad that provides a link to your site which when clicked, plays the content.  Today’s message, “help yourself help others by doing mobile advertising!”

Quick tip on the next blog post: check out Mojiva for mobile advertising. This is one of the mobile ad networks we’ve been experimenting with. More on this cool service next time.

Tags: ABI, engagement, Forrester, Juniper, location based services, Mobile Marketing, mojiva, smart phone

finding words is super fun: update on iPhone app promotions

Posted by admin | Monday, April 27th, 2009 | General Musings | No Comments

Tags: Admob, banner ads, facebook, m3rcury labs, Mobile Marketing, mojiva, myspace, Quatro, super word find

Using video to promote your products and content- one example

Posted by Spencer Cobb | Monday, January 12th, 2009 | General Musings | No Comments

As I discussed in my last post, m3rcury is currently working with a couple of entities to help market their content on mobile devices. One client M.A.D. Partners Ltd based in the UK is getting ready to launch a couple of apps for the Apple iPhone. They’ve been kind enough to allow me use their launch for their new “Super Word Find for iPhone” as a case study for m3rcury.

Part of the strategy we’ll be implementing is a multi-threaded approach: video content, banner ads (both on mobile devices and via internet sites, as well as social media marketing. If your business is getting ready to launch a product or service there’s no better way to communicate your offering’s value to your customer than by a simple product video.

Direct link to M.A.D. Partner’s video for their “Super Word Find”.

As you’ll see, its less than two minutes, but concisely speaks to the features the application contains, and why someone would buy it. You can upload the video to a service like YouTube for free in a matter of minutes - and then you’re ready to roll. You can include links to the video on your website, and easily point new customers to the demo vid.

Check back here often as I’ll be documenting some of the activities ( social marketing etc).

And if you have any iPhone, look for “Super Word Find” in the Apple iTunes App store!

What’s Your Business’ iPhone Strategy?

Posted by Spencer Cobb | Sunday, December 14th, 2008 | General Musings, Mobile Marketing | No Comments

Unless you’ve just gotten home from a 6 month safari or fishing trip where you had no exposure to media, you are probably aware that the iPhone from Apple is nothing short of a social and technological phenomenon. Earlier this year Apple’s iPhone surpassed RIM’s blackberry in number of units sold per quarter to become the best selling smart phone in America. Apple sold nearly 7 Million iPhones for Q3 08, bringing the total number of iphones on the market to 10M.

This number pales in comparison to the 250 Million non iphones on the market. However, research shows of the 250Million non iPhones out there, their users download 3 million applications a week. Apple’s iphone generates 14 Million application downloads each week! This article discusses the $100 Million iFund and the prediction that their will be as many as 50 Million iPhones on the market by end of next year.

The numbers don’t lie, but if you still are not a believer, look around you the next time you are on a train, in a doctors office or at a shopping mall: chances are the guy or gal on the phone with the smile on their face is proudly using an iPhone. IPhone users I know are ‘in love’ with the design and functionality of the device and love the ready availability of the itunes application store.

So this begs the question for you, Mr or Mrs business owner: whats your iPhone strategy?

We here are m3rcury are currently working with a couple of different companies to help them with their iphone application development and marketing strategy. We plan to use at least one as a case study soon so check back often. Could your business benefit from a mobile presence? Would you like to advertise to 10 million or so iPhone users out there? Would your business benefit from the latest GPS functionality in mobile phones so your users could easily find your brick & mortar store front?
Contact us today for help in formulating your business’ mobile marketing strategy.

Tags: iPhone, mobile advertising, mobile marketing strategy

What should I blog about next?

Posted by Spencer Cobb | Friday, November 7th, 2008 | General Musings | No Comments

How many times have you asked yourself this daunting question? If there’s one bit of constant feedback I get from talking with people who use blogging as part of their business (or personal) communication, its their dread of the grind of coming up with new, fresh content. How many of us haven’t felt that pressure? I know I have. Heck, that’s what brought me to this post. Its easy to begin feeling overwhelmed, so I thought I’d provide some ideas to consider that might help you find topics to blog on and keep your blog fresh.

I’ve seen many personal/individual’s blogs where someone discusses any and every current event just to try keep content fresh, but from a business’ point of view, a blog is one of the best ways you have of starting a conversation with your prospects and customers. Sure, your post can and should have good, insightful information that makes it unique and provides some value to your readers like good tips or how to guides etc. However, try posing a question which elicits an answer from your readers which other readers can comment on. This can teach you a lot about your business, your products, how your brand and message is being received and so much more.

One idea you might try is asking your peers, customers or even prospects to write a guest post. As you’ve seen already, we do this here at m3rcury. We plan to have several of our partners and peers guest blog pretty frequently about their specific area of knowledge and experience. Not only does this provide excellent insight into specific topics for our readers and make it more interesting, but also takes some of the pressure off of me to be fabulously creative and come up with original topics to expound upon.

Another great idea I wanted to share I picked up from Ellie Mirman at Hubspot, which is a blog that is just chock full of great advice. She suggests interviewing a thought leader or peer for your blog. You can read about it here.

( Note this would also make a great podcast. So check back soon for tips on easy, high quality podcasting).

For more tips on blogging, check out this quick video from Problogger.net.

What would your customers say if they blogged about your business?

Domains and Web Hosting - Choosing a Vendor

Posted by Milt Webb | Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 | Websites - Design and Development | No Comments

Back when I started creating websites I used to offer domain name registation and web hosting in addition to my other services. I don’t do that anymore. After working with a number of clients where the original designer was no longer available, or proved to be unsatifactory, I quickly learned this was not in the best interest of the client.

In many cases, the designer did not register the domain name in the clients name and as a result the client had no access to their own domain name records. If the designer were also providing hosting of the website it became very difficult to move the website to a reliable hosting services and make the necessary changes to the domain name records.

What I recommend to all clients — especially those creating their first website — is register your own domain name using one of many resources available, such as GoDaddy, Register.com, or Network Solutions. I register domain name with GKG.NET — my personal favorite. I would also recommend that you not host your website with the same company. Keep everything separate — here why.

Suppose you register your domain name with GoDaddy and you decide to also use them for hosting the website. Seems like a logical thing to do — one location — one invoice. What if you have a performance problem with the hosting, or later discover you need additional hosting services they don’t provide. You now have to find another hosting vendor, move the website, setup the mail accounts with the new vendor — and then discontinue the original hosting service but leaving the domain name registration with GoDaddy. A lot of work…

You have more flexibility by registering the domain with one vendor and using a separate vendor for hosting the site. Companies that offer great rates and service for registering domains don’t always follow through on the hosting part of the offering. Also, be aware that many hosting providers offer incredibly-low rates and this is not always a bargain. Often times the low rates are achieved by overselling server space and resources and limited the amount of support available.

The important thing to remember is to do this yourself — you shouldn’t let the web designer do it.

In case you’re interested, my preferred web hosting provider is Pair Networks www.pair.com — that’s where this site is hosted.

An introduction…

Posted by Spencer Cobb | Thursday, October 16th, 2008 | General Musings | No Comments

A little about me…

I’m award winning strategic sales and marketing professional with over 10 years of successful experience selling internet technology products and services to the Fortune 1000. I’ve also won awards as a producer and video editor and have experience in both large and small budget film, video and audio productions in various roles.

As the scale and relevance of audio and video content on the internet have grown exponentially, I’ve found my skill set makes me uniquely qualified to advise businesses on their content dissemination strategies.

Contact us today to discuss your company’s strategic vision for using content to enhance your business goals.

Why Hot Leads Turn Cold on your Website

Posted by Francesca Yates | Thursday, October 16th, 2008 | Content Writing | No Comments

You’re not alone. Most small to medium-size businesses on the Internet don’t hire a professional writer to create the content of their websites. The fact is, five or ten years ago, it really wouldn’t have mattered. Just about everybody had amateurish sites. The fact that you even had a website was impressive enough.

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